‘You are mistaken. You achieve that quite successfully without help from myself or, indeed, anyone else – and if I’d wanted to embarrass you, I’d have publicly refused to accept your vowels. As it is, I’ve better ways of passing my time.’ His lordship’s face was stern and his eyes held a glint of steel. ‘I know you fancy the exquisite Fanny to have been a victim of my rank, my wealth and my Machiavellian wiles designed to thwart your happiness - but it isn’t so. And while I make full allowance for your natural disappointment at the time, you should by now have contrived to master it.’
‘You don’t understand!’ It was the resentful cry of youth. ‘She loved me before you came along and turned her head!’
‘I assure you that I understand only too well,’ came the calm reply. ‘And though I doubt you will believe it, she was by no means the blushing little flower of virtue you apparently believed her to be – and quite shockingly expensive.’ Amberley surveyed Robert’s expression of implacable but frustrated fury and then gave a tiny shrug. ‘All this is beside the point. You think I called you here to pay me. I didn’t. I leave town this afternoon and I wished, before I left, to inform you that the only use I have for your vowels is to light the fire with them.’ He opened a drawer in his desk and then tossed a small packet into the younger man’s lap. ‘Here – take them.’
For a second Robert was dumbstruck and then he lifted his eyes from the bundle of paper to look suspiciously at the Marquis.
‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What do you want of me?’
A look of mild contempt darkened the grey-green eyes. ‘I don’t want anything of you. It would, of course, be pleasant if you refrained from making the same mistake again but I imagine that’s too much to hope for – at least until you exhaust the good-nature of your friends.’
Robert flushed, suddenly conscious of Lord Philip’s bills nestling comfortably in his pocket.
‘As for why,’ Amberley went on scathingly, ‘it is a matter of honour. And for the sake of some future young idiot, as yet still in the nursery, I can only hope that you’ll come to understand that for yourself in time.’
‘All you care about is what will be said of you,’ accused Robert.
The Marquis wished that Mr Ingram had been privileged to hear that remark and his laugh held real amusement. ‘Hardly – though you would naturally think so.’
The brown eyes narrowed. ‘You mean you don’t intend to tell everyone?’
‘No. You really shouldn’t judge everyone by your own standards, you know.’
Robert ignored this. An idea was taking shape and the simplicity of it stopped his breath. Two birds with one stone – and all he needed to do was to keep his mouth shut and trust Amberley to do the same. He subdued an impulse to smile, the first he had known in two days, and got up, cramming the vowels into his pocket.
‘Very well – I accept your word,’ he said ungraciously. ‘So if there’s nothing else you wish to say to me, I’ll take my leave.’
‘I can think of several things but I’m quite sure it would be a waste of breath,’ said his lordship dryly as he pulled the tasselled cord that would summon his butler. Then, thoughtfully, ‘I take it that your military friend is new to town?’
‘My military friend?’ echoed Robert blankly. ‘Oh – yes. He’s to marry my sister – though I can’t conceive why it should interest you.’
Amberley smiled slowly. ‘It doesn’t. But it explains a lot.’
*
Walking away from Hanover Square in the direction of Pall Mall and the Cocoa Tree Club, it never once occurred to Mr Dacre that he had neither contemplated refusing Lord Amberley’s generous offer nor made even a token gesture of gratitude.
It occurred to the Marquis – but being precisely what he had expected, he did not allow it more than a passing thought. Indeed, he considered the episode both trivial and finished … and would have been very surprised had he known then how much trouble was still to come from it.
*
By two o’clock the Marquis’s elegant travelling-chaise was bowling north towards Ware and at a half after four, it halted at the Green Man in Waltham Cross for a change of horses. After one glance at the rapidly darkening sky, his lordship declined to enter the inn but stayed only while the change was completed. He had known before leaving town that he had no chance of reaching his destination before nightfall but he certainly hoped to do so before the promised snow became a reality. The weather, he thought resignedly, was already responsible for his making the journey inside the chaise with Saunders instead of perched behind his greys in the phaeton – and that was more than enough. He had no wish to benighted.
In the eyes of those who served him, Lord Amberley was possessed of only one eccentricity – a minor foible which did no harm except to establish a lively rivalry between his head coachman and his chief groom. It was simply that he preferred, whenever possible, to drive himself – which meant that while the coachman sat behind the kitchen table staring morosely into a pint of ale, the groom sat behind the Marquis and enjoyed the freedom of tap-rooms the length and breadth of the country. And today, as he hauled himself back on to the box, Chard could not help dwelling bitterly on the fact that life was demonstrably unfair.
Inside the chaise, the Marquis leant back against the velvet squabs with closed eyes. His breathing was even, his body swayed easily with the motion of the carriage and anyone seeing him could have been pardoned for thinking that he slept.
Jim Saunders, though he rarely travelled in his master’s company, knew better. Amberley was not asleep and neither was he as relaxed as he appeared. It was almost as though the very fact of being driven was sufficient to make him tense – an odd trait in one otherwise so rational. There did not seem to be any accounting for it.
By the time Ware was reached it was pitch dark and the weather was worsening. Flakes of snow settled on the coachman and his attendant groom and stuck. The groom folded his arms tight across his chest in an attitude of endurance. Chard, on the other hand, was audibly unhappy.
‘Rot it!’ he muttered as the off-leader stumbled in a rut. ‘Rot the lousy road and rot the lousy weather. But ain’t it always the same?’
The groom did not reply. He might be young and new to his position but he was able to recognise a rhetorical question when he heard it.
‘Do I ever get a nice little trip in the sun?’ Chard went on, warming to his theme. ‘Do I ever go to Merton or Richmond or get a day at the races? Oh no! It’s Keele as gets all that. I’m just the poor sod as has to keep us out of the ditch in the dark – and if that ain’t enough, I have to catch me death while I’m adoing it! Come hail, come rain, come thunderstorm, here I sit driving his perishing team – and now here we are heading into a blizzard in the bloody dark. It ain’t fair!’
‘Why don’t you leave him then?’ asked the groom unwisely.
‘Leave him? Leave him?’ Chard swelled with indignation. ‘I’ve been driving him for ten years – and afore that, I drove his father. And afore that, my father did it!’
This was confusing. ‘But if you don’t like working for him … ‘ the groom began.
‘Who said I didn’t?’ demanded Chard, incensed. And then, ‘Idiot!’
Startled, the groom begged pardon, dropped his chin on his chest and retreated into the comparative safety of silence while he pondered the incomprehensible complexities of human nature. And then he was jerked suddenly upright by the sound of a shot passing over his head.
‘What the -- ?’
‘Fool!’ yelled the coachman. ‘Use your blunderbuss!’
While the groom fumbled with nerveless fingers for the weapon lying at his feet, Chard whipped up his horses with the intention of running down the two mounted figures in the road ahead. Then there was a second explosion and the reins fell slack as the coachman slumped heavily against his terrified companion.
At the sound of the first shot, Saunders had leant swiftly across to drop a hand on the Marquis’ arm.
‘Y
es, Jim. I heard it.’ His lordship did not move but his eyes were open and alert. ‘I’d say the new man was a little slow with the gun, wouldn’t you?’
And then came the second shot and the vehicle lurched to a shuddering standstill.
The Marquis discouraged his valet from jumping down with a brief shake of his head, while his right hand slid unhurriedly into his pocket. Aside from that, he still did not move.
There was a good deal of noise outside. Two rough voices were raised – one commanding the groom to throw down his weapon and the other berating someone called Joe for not shooting wide of his mark. Amberley’s mouth tightened into a grim line and then the door of the coach was wrenched open and the muzzle of a large pistol inserted through it.
‘Empty your pockets and be quick about it!’ said the voice responsible for disarming the groom.
‘Go to hell,’ replied the Marquis calmly. And his hand came swiftly out of his pocket.
There was a sharp report; a little tongue of flame momentarily lit the darkness and the shape at the door dropped where it stood. Almost before it hit the ground, Amberley was out of the chaise into the swirling snow and levelling a second pistol at the other highwayman who, equally quick to react, dived headlong into the cover of the trees.
The Marquis lowered his arm and turned round to find his valet dispassionately regarding the still body of Joe. ‘He’s dead, my lord. Half his head blown off, by the look of it.’
Nodding curtly, as if the matter held no interest for him, Amberley focussed his attention on his coachman.
His arms still frantically clutching Chard’s still figure, the young groom look down into his employer’s unusually stern countenance and hurried into speech.
‘My lord, I swear I did my best. But we was took by surprise and Mr Chard wouldn’t - -‘
‘Is he dead?’ The cold question halted the boy’s faltering excuses.
‘I – I d-don’t know.’
The Marquis lifted his foot to the step and swung himself lightly up to examine Chard as best he could in the dark. His fingers located a sluggishly-beating pulse and then, having opened the man’s coat, came back wet with blood. The groom looked on horrified and began excusing himself again.
‘Be quiet and help me get him down,’ his lordship ordered crisply. ‘Jim – come and lend a hand.’
‘Is it bad?’ asked Saunders, panting a little from the exertion of lifting the coachman into the chaise. Chard was not a small man.
‘I don’t know.’ Amberley folded his handkerchief into a pad and then, finding it insufficient, pulled off his ruffled cravat to press it over the wound. ‘The bullet’s high in the shoulder but he’s bleeding very heavily and needs better attention than we can give him here.’ He cast his cloak over the inert body and stepped back on to the road. ‘Where the devil are we?’
‘I’m not sure, my lord – but I think we’re three or four miles short of Hadham Cross.’
‘Damnation.’ For once the Marquis was plainly unamused. ‘And nothing behind us for the same distance back to Ware. Well, it won’t do. He’ll bleed to death before we can get him there. Devil take it, there must be something closer – even if it’s only a cottage!’ He picked up the abandoned blunderbuss and tossed it up to the groom. ‘Here – and try to keep it ready this time. Jim – get inside with Chard and hold him as still as you can. I’m going to drive on and see what I can find.’
The snow made visibility uncertain and, within minutes, Amberley’s hair and coat were thickly powdered with white. The groom, huddled inside his frieze coat and nervously clutching the gun, wondered how his lordship could drive without gloves – for even with them his own hands were freezing.
But if the Marquis felt the cold he gave no sign of it, tooling the chaise expertly down the road whilst keeping a watchful eye over the top of the hedgerow. Suddenly, he found what he’d hoped for; a pair of wrought-iron gates and a lodge with lights at the windows. Swinging his team off the road, Amberley sent the groom to rouse the keeper and within minutes they were on the wide, curving drive which led up to the house. Lights showed here too and the arrival of a chaise-and-four outside the colonnaded entrance was enough to bring the butler to the door before the Marquis had even reached the top step.
‘Good evening,’ said his lordship briskly but with a hint of his usual charming smile. ‘I apologise for the intrusion but I have a wounded man who needs shelter and medical attention – preferably from a doctor. Will you ask your master if I may bring him inside?’
The butler gave a slight but very stately bow. ‘That will not be necessary, sir.’ The man in front of him might be excessively dishevelled and have arrived on the box of his carriage, but Josiah Lawson knew a gentleman when he saw one. Waving a lordly hand at a pair of matching, green-liveried footmen, he said, ‘Thomas, Claude – your assistance will be required.’ And, bowing again to Amberley, ‘If you would care to step inside, sir?’
‘Thank you – in a moment.’ His lordship was already on his way back to the chaise with Thomas and Claude. ‘Lift him carefully and mind his left shoulder. He’s been shot. Gently now.’
Once inside the house, Chard was lowered full length on a satin-covered sofa while the butler addressed himself once more to the Marquis.
‘My mistress has been informed of your arrival, sir, and has instructed me to have your man put to bed and to send a groom for the doctor - subject, of course, to your approval.’
‘I would be most grateful.’ Amberley’s eyes were still on the coachman’s ashen face. ‘It’s a bullet-wound – did I say? The doctor will need to be told.’
‘I will ensure that he is informed of it, sir,’ replied Lawson. He motioned the footmen to resume their burden. ‘The yellow chamber – and you may undress him before summoning Mrs Reed.’
The Marquis looked round at his valet. ‘Go with them, Jim and give what help you can. I shan’t need you.’
Saunders, his professional and artistic soul in torment over the picture of his master – wet, blood-stained and lacking his cravat - would dearly have loved to voice his disagreement with this statement but he knew better than to attempt it. With a small, wooden bow which he hoped conveyed some small part of his disapproval, he followed in the wake of Thomas and Claude.
A gleam of humour flickered in his lordship’s eyes but his mind was occupied by matters a good deal more important than the state of his dress and he turned back to the butler, saying rapidly, ‘I’m afraid that I shall have to impose on your mistress’s hospitality at least until I hear what the doctor has to say – but after that, I’ll naturally remove myself to the nearest inn. Meanwhile, perhaps my groom could take my horses to your stables? They will need rubbing down if they’re not to take cold.’
Lawson bowed but, before he could answer, the Marquis added one final request, palpably an after-thought. ‘Ah yes – and while your man is out fetching the doctor, it might be possible for him to deliver a message to either the parish constable or the magistrate. My coachman was shot when we were set upon by two highwaymen. One of them made good his escape but the other is lying on the road about a mile south of your gates. He ought, I imagine, to be removed.’
‘Is he dead?’ a musical and undoubtedly feminine voice enquired interestedly from behind him.
‘He is most certainly dead,’ responded Amberley, swinging round to face the speaker. ‘I’m afraid that I … ‘ And there he stopped, his breath deserting him with an impact that was almost painful.
She stood at the foot of the stairs, gowned in amber silk and cream lace, one small hand resting lightly on the carved newel; and she was the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. Softly gleaming hair, black as night, rippled back from a smooth, white brow and left tiny, curling tendrils around a heart-shaped face of ineffable sweetness. Eyes, heavily fringed with sweeping lashes and so dark he knew not if they were blue or black, gazed steadily at him from beneath narrow, winged brows, while a faint smile tugged at the soft curves of her mouth.
<
br /> ‘Yes?’ she prompted him. ‘You are afraid that … ?’
‘That I killed him,’ replied the Marquis mechanically. He was aware that he was staring at her like a doltish schoolboy but there seemed to be every excuse. Then, collecting his scattered wits, he smiled and made her a deeply elegant bow. ‘I’m very grateful for your kindness to my servant. Without it, I fear he may well have died.’
‘It’s nothing,’ she said pleasantly. Strangely, she did not curtsy in response to his bow but started to cross the hall, her walk slow and infinitely graceful. ‘We are more than happy to be able to help.’
The butler moved to open the doors in front of her and then stepped back to let her pass.
‘Thank you.’ She paused, half-turning towards Amberley. ‘Do come in to the fire, sir. They tell me that it is snowing quite hard now and you must be very cold.’
The Marquis was suddenly acutely conscious of what five minutes ago had bothered him not at all. His hair was wet and windswept, his coat creased and blood-stained and his cravat upstairs with Chard. A faint flush stained his cheeks and he hesitated, casting a glance of comic appeal at the butler.
It went unanswered. Lawson merely bowed and ushered him into the uncompromising light of the parlour, leaving his lordship feeling quite unaccustomedly foolish as the doors closed softly behind him.
~ * * * ~
THREE
‘Please sit down and get warm,’ the girl invited as she moved away across the room. Her fingers trailed lightly along the back of a gessoed sofa and she came to rest beside a handsome sideboard upon which stood a decanter and glasses. ‘Will you have some claret? At least, I think it’s claret – though it seems only fair to warn you that it may be port.’ She gave a little gurgle of laughter. ‘Are you prepared to take your chances, sir?’
An answering gleam leapt to Lord Amberley’s eye. ‘Only provided that you are prepared to assure me that there is no possibility of it being ratafia.’
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